FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Talking about Muslim extremism is difficult. Any criticism of Islam or even radical Islamism is considered Islamophobic and gets the speaker labeled as a bigot.

So the non-Muslim world seems to be divided between those who will not say anything negative at all against any form of Islam — the US Homeland Security officials who have banned the word ‘jihad’, for example — and those, like Geert Wilders who can deal with being called racists or ‘Islamophobes’. The latter, like Wilders, often end up associating with real racists, because they are among the few  publicly opposing Islamic extremism.

I’ve found it hard to discuss these issues myself, particularly with people who have been educated since the civil rights movement of the 1960’s (that’s the majority these days). The taboo against anything perceived as racism is huge in America, which I think has been traumatized by coming to understand the true dimensions of the injustice committed against African-Americans from its beginning until just recently. Insofar as consciousness of racist attitudes reduces racist behavior, this is a good thing, but the taboo limits discourse about any inherent differences between members of ethnic, racial or gender groups. Just ask Lawrence Summers.

One of the taboos is that ‘profiling’ is forbidden. An example is the recent case of four Muslims in Newburgh NY who planned and tried to carry out attacks on Jewish institutions and military installations. They were arrested as a result of information provided by undercover FBI informants in their mosque, a practice which has prompted complaints by some Muslims.

One thing which is not productive is trying to explain violent extremism by what is written in the Quran, as Wilders does in his controversial film, Fitna. If you want to understand why, Google ‘Talmud’ and see what antisemites do with passages taken out of context. Perhaps the Quran encourages violence, perhaps not. And there are cultural factors, particularly in Arab culture, which come into play as well.

On the other hand, is it reasonable to try to talk about terrorism in the world today without mentioning Islam, or without using the word ‘jihad’?

A friend, who knows much more about Islam than I, some years ago said this: don’t look for answers in the Quran — look at what Muslims do.

In that connection, here’s a picture from the local media of a sign held up by a participant in a demonstration here against the war in Gaza last December.

Sign at Gaza War demonstration, Fresno (courtesy KMPH TV Ch. 26)

The young man holding the sign was interviewed by the TV reporter who asked “do you really mean that?”

“Yes,” he said. “Death to Israel. I really mean that.”

Technorati Tags: Islam, extremism, Muslims

This afternoon I attended the “Free Gaza” presentation at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Fresno, the presentation that I wrote about last week (“Pro-Hamas activists to speak in Fresno“). About 50 people, mostly church members, attended.

I stood at the door before the event and handed out flyers, which read in part:

The speakers today will tell you that they are fighting for the Palestinian people. But their actual goal is to assist the genocidal Hamas organization.

The Gaza Strip is currently ruled by Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement) which took control of the area from the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup in 2007.

Hamas’ reason for being is to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state. Its methods are the most violent possible. Since 2000, Hamas has murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians by bombings, shootings and rocket and mortar attacks.

The ‘occupation’ they talk about is the ‘occupation’ that began with Israel’s creation in 1948, not the 1967 war.

The so-called Free Gaza Movement is part of a propaganda apparatus which tries to portray the Iranian-financed proxy war being fought against Israel by Hamas and other extremist groups as a human rights issue. It is not – it is an asymmetric war in which the concept of human rights is cynically used by some of the world’s most intolerant, hateful extremists to try to prevent Israel from defending herself.

What you will hear and see today will be a combination of exaggerations, lies, and – most importantly – partial facts presented without context.

I followed this with some excerpts from the Hamas Covenant, so everyone would know who Hamas is.

The presentation was strange, sort of a throwback to a 1950s anti-communist B-movie. The room was festooned with Palestinian flags, the lectern draped with a keffiya. Donna and Darlene were, if anything, more robotic and humorless than their picture  suggests.

It began with two music videos, one sort of lyrical, praising the courage of the Palestinian people and predicting their ultimate triumph (in nonspecific terms), the other a hip-hop rant:

Israel is a terrorist state!

Free Palestine!

Free Palestine!

Donna and Darlene then proceeded for one hour and 45 minutes to do exactly what I had predicted in my flyer. Mostly they provided partial facts without context. For example, they showed a video of an Israeli patrol boat firing into the water near a Palestinian fishing boat and finally dousing it with a water cannon. Just an example of the sadistic Israelis torturing the poor fishermen, they said.

Clearly the explanation was that the Palestinians were testing the limits, and the Israelis were (non-lethally) enforcing them. But the limits are imposed “in order to deny them a livelihood”, they insist. No, there are limits because otherwise the fishing boats will smuggle weapons, explosives and terrorist operatives into Gaza.

Everything that Israel did was presented as motivated by a desire to torture, starve, humiliate and perpetrate a genocide on the Palestinians — as if there could be no other reason for these actions, no history of Palestinian (and particularly Hamas) terrorism against Israel, no need for security measures.

They took questions.

I asked how they — Jews themselves — came to adopt the Palestinian cause. Donna told me that she had lived some time in Israel and was shocked by the racist attitudes of Jews toward Arabs. Palestinians, she said, were different, they were not racists, not full of hatred, they were reacting in the only way an oppressed people can.

Not racists? Tell it to the ones who yelled itbach al yahud [slaughter the Jews] when they lynched the Israeli reservists who got lost in Ramallah in 2001. Not full of hatred? What else can you call it when you swing an ax at an Israeli child because he is an Israeli (or a Jew)?

A local rabbi spoke for about one minute — while a Palestinian woman tried to shout him down — and asked whether they would have supported the 1947 UN partition resolution. Should there be a Jewish state at all?

“No,” Darlene said. “Israel is an abomination.”

Update [3 Jun 0721 PDT]:

Apparently it is not only in Fresno where Unitarian Universalist churches provide a venue for radical anti-Israel and even antisemitic expression. See this report by BlueTruth about the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists for an even worse example.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Free Gaza, Fresno

Fresno will shortly be treated to a film and a visit from a pair of pro-Palestinian — actually, it is probably more correct to call them pro-Hamas — activists.

I’m really tempted to make fun of their costumes, but unfortunately we need to take them, or rather the phenomenon that they represent, seriously. Let me quote from their website:

Darlene Wallach and Donna Wallach, Jewish anti-zionist social justice activists, recently returned to the Bay Area after living in Gaza Strip, Palestine from August – December 2008. Along with 41 other human rights workers they broke the Israeli blockade of Gaza onboard the two Free Gaza movement boats, SS Liberty & SS Free Gaza, which arrived to Gaza in August 2008. Darlene and Donna remained in Gaza with four other international volunteers and re-established International Solidarity Movement Gaza Strip. While accompanying Palestinian fishermen and farmers, and living among the people, they witnessed Israeli occupation force soldiers constantly violate the six month June 2008 ceasefire, and perpetrate collective punishment on the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Listen to them speak about the spirit, resilience, kindness, generousity [sic], and sense of humor of the Palestinian people and the peaceful ways they survive the brutal and genocidal Israeli blockade and Occupation.

Just a few comments on the above:

There was never a ‘blockade’ of Gaza in the sense of an attempt to prevent necessities like food and medicine from reaching the Palestinians. On several occasions crossing points were closed in response to Hamas mortar attacks against the crossings. Israel tried to prevent access by sea — although it allowed the ‘free Gaza’ boats entry — due to concern about arms and explosives being smuggled into the Strip. During the period that the ‘activists’ were in Gaza, the ‘Sinai Subway’ — literally hundreds of tunnels under the Egyptian border with Gaza — flowed with everything from ammunition and explosives to consumer goods to zoo animals. Here’s a picture of British ‘activist’ Lauren Booth in a Gaza grocery store during the ‘genocidal blockade’:

The cease-fire was broken in November 2008 when Israeli soldiers entered Gaza to destroy a tunnel that had been dug close to the border with the intent to capture Israeli soldiers, like Gilad Shalit who has been held since June 2006. Six Hamas terrorists were killed in the operation, which culminated in a huge explosion as a booby-trapped building over the tunnel entrance exploded. Should Israel have waited for Hamas to put the tunnel to use? I should add that the cease-fire was accompanied only by a reduction in, not a cessation of,  rocket fire into Israel.

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM)

is a Palestinian-run organization which recruits ‘internationals’ (mostly Europeans and Americans) to take part in demonstrations, interfere with IDF activities, sabotage the security fence, etc. This serves a dual purpose: they can get away with activities for which Israeli citizens or Palestinians would be arrested, and they become passionate advocates of the Palestinian cause in their home countries. Rachel Corrie was an ISM member.

In the US, the ISM is known as the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, or PSM. It has connections to other anti-Israel groups such as al-Awda (”the right of return”) and others. It employs a highly effective propaganda approach in which support for the destruction of Israel is linked to themes popular among young people, such as environmentalism, human rights, civil rights, and opposition to the Iraq war. It presents Israel as a racist apartheid state.

ISM/PSM turns the truth upside down, and uses the language of peace, freedom, human rights, anti-racism, justice, and nonviolence to support a project which is being implemented by means of terrorism, which is genocidal in its goals, and whose practitioners are racist, sexist and homophobic. — FresnoZionism, “The ISM: ‘non-violent’ support of terrorism“

The ISM especially seeks out Jewish conscripts, both because of the propaganda value of Jews denouncing Israel and because many Jews have a highly-developed social conscience and sense of empathy.

Something which Donna and Darlene did not put in their description was the word ‘Hamas’. Hamas is the Islamic fundamentalist organization which controls Gaza, having seized power in a bloody coup during which they shot Palestinian opponents in the knees before pushing them off tall buildings. Hamas explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel — not just the return of occupied territories — and the murder of Jews everywhere. According to Hamas, all of historical Palestine is Islamic territory and the only way to redeem it is by violent Jihad. All of the above and more  can be found in the Hamas covenant, here.

Hamas, despite being an offshoot of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, has allied itself with Shiite Iran, which sees American-allied Israel as an obstacle to expanding its influence in the region. Although ideologically diverse, they share the desire to wipe out Israel; and today Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah are the major weapons in Iran’s proxy war against Israel.

Since 2000, Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis by suicide bombings, rockets, mortars, shootings, etc. Hamas established itself in Gaza when Israel withdrew from there  in 2005 and took complete control in 2007. Since then it has waged both a military and information war against Israel, combining rocket fire — over 1,500 in 2008, despite the 6-month cease-fire — with highly effective propaganda, such as the manufactured ‘siege of Gaza’.

In December 2008, Israel launched a military campaign to finally put an end to the rockets. Although the IDF took measures unprecedented in modern warfare to reduce civilian casualties and unnecessary damage, Hamas conducted a campaign of exaggeration and outright lies, accusing Israel of war crimes and deliberate brutality. This was lapped up by anti-Israel media and non-governmental organizations, which repeated Hamas fabrications as fact.

Because of a combination of Israeli timidity and US pressure, the war was ended before significant practical gains could be made against Hamas’ military capability. The information war waged by Hamas, however, was wildly successful.

One of the most effective anti-Israel techniques has been to present the conflict as a struggle for human rights for weak, victimized Palestinians against a powerful colonialist power, rather than as a large cooperative enterprise to eliminate the Jewish state. Hamas understands well that while it cannot defeat the IDF on the battlefield, it can manipulate Western nations to force Israel to make concessions.

This presentation is part of the information war being waged against Israel. The film and speakers will doubtless focus on Palestinian suffering, real and invented, while ignoring or excusing the racist and murderous nature of Hamas, and without reference to the context of the Iranian-financed campaign to destroy the Jewish state.

Darlene and Donna’s presentation is being sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno, along with Peace Fresno and the Center for Nonviolence. Since it serves Hamas, an organization devoted to violent jihad, one wonders if any of them have the slightest idea of what they are doing.

Update [9 Jun 2009 2207 PDT]:

I went to the event. Here is my report.

Technorati Tags: Eyewitness Gaza, Israel, Hamas